


interstice

by comehereoften



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, additions etc, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 09:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21505519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comehereoften/pseuds/comehereoften
Summary: in·ter·stice/inˈtərstəs/noun.an intervening spaceA series of short vignettes between Vanity breaking up and reconciling/pensiveness from Charity's PoV. Because I'm a masochist.
Relationships: Charity Dingle/Vanessa Woodfield
Comments: 8
Kudos: 86





	interstice

She leaves and it’s messy. It’s a deep track of guilt and all its burning coldness hollowing her out from the inside. It’s 3AM rolling around numb and empty and an absence of breathing - Vanessa’s, missing, Charity’s, shallow. It’s twining loose strands of hair around her fingers until they tangle and snap.

The sad part is she’s known enough loss to know it’s a myth that the first night’s the hardest. Charity considers her salt-stained pillow and her inability to get warm and she knows she’ll have to do this all again tomorrow. And again.

At four she leaves the empty bedroom for the empty kitchen. The shadows chase every discernible shape into darkness and she can feel the chill coming off the stone walls sink right into her bones. Then she stubs her toe in the dark and swears and then everything’s quiet again. Charity’s eyes start to water but she grits her teeth and embraces the hot wash of pain because it feels good to feel _something_. Even if it means whacking her foot on the table leg. Right now it’s something close to lustration.

There’s gin under the sink, behind the bleach. She’s not sure why but that seemed like the best place for it; in what now seems like some past domestic life when it mattered where things were kept. Charity pulls the cupboard open and unscrews the lid but the smell hits her as she tips the bottle back, and with it the futility of the action. She spits it out into the sink before she gags. The tap is a violent crash of noise in the stillness as it chases her regret down the plughole, and she mourns it when it’s gone a second later.

She doesn’t think she could cry anymore even if she wanted to, even in the dark. Charity knows tomorrow will bring defiance and anger and it will feel safe to scream before she hates herself for it. She trudges back upstairs and into bed even though it’s the last place she wants to go.

When she finally falls asleep it’s on Vanessa’s side, she tells herself it’s because it’s where the pillow’s dry.

**_..._ **

“Charity, no.”

She doesn’t know what’s worse, the rejection or the embarrassment. Every bad thing in her life is compounding one after the other like an eight car pileup. Even now Vanessa doesn’t look at her with pity, only hurt.

Charity can’t bring herself to say anything else, she just nods and leaves and hopes she didn’t just tear something else apart. It feels stupid now, thoughtless, to have tried to kiss her. Charity chastises herself and reminds herself for the millionth time that it’s true what they say about hindsight.

Doesn’t matter. She can only ever step back from her feelings once they’ve escaped. Once they’ve exploded. It’s only then the tunnel vision lifts and she can see what affects who by how much and why. Like picking through shrapnel and uncovering what hasn’t been buried in flesh, and what has.

She shuts the door and wanders home, bleeding.

**_..._ **

Charity sees her around the village, disappearing off up the street or walking out of the pub as she’s about to start her shift. Last time they overlapped someone else got the drinks and Charity just stared at the side of her head hoping she’d turn and make eye contact, even by accident. Part of her knew she wouldn’t. Vanessa’s too resolute in her decisions for one thing, and too engaged in whoever she happens to be with for another.

Charity’s always admired that to the point of envy and then to the point of love, the way Vanessa doesn’t do attention in halves. She invests and doesn’t falter, everyone she meets will at one point have all of her. Sometimes it made her jealous, now she just misses it. Misses her.

Then her heart starts beating too fast and her palms start to prickle and she lashes out blind at whoever’s closest. Vomits up everything she can’t tamp down in one hot, heaving pool of blackness; then it starts to stain and she has to swallow it all back down again. It sits there inside her. Toxic. Roiling.

**_..._ **

She stays with Moses until he falls asleep and then after to distract herself from the fact she can’t. Exhaustion is wearing her thin, her edges are fraying. He’s safe now, she tells herself, the hardest part should be over. But there’s still someone missing, and if she wasn’t she’d be here trying to convince Charity she’s not a bad mother. Vanessa’s a glutton for a losing battle.

Slowly she’s realising there’s no displacing blame. It remains her default to try but it still comes back, sticks to her. That’s something else she has to swallow, a deeply bitter pill. When she finally chokes it down it settles easily. It goes against her very core to let accountability make a home in her, until now. Vanessa never made it look so bad, encouraged it, even. Charity goes through the motions of wrestling children through the weekend and by Monday it still hurts but she’s not as angry.

That night she drinks most of a bottle of red wine and falls asleep wrapped around a pillow. When she wakes everything feels dried up, desiccated. Her eyes, her mouth. Her heart. Her and culpability are strange bedfellows. She’s had worse.

**_..._ **

Vanessa leaves again and the sick soaking into the carpet suddenly isn’t the most acrid thing hanging in the air. Charity half wants to scream again, “What more can I _do_?”

She knows. It’s not even something deep down and buried. She knows because Vanessa makes it her business to tell her, and being with her that eventually rubs off. She can see outside of herself now, she’s not just running around in the dark. She was always running, stumbling, screaming. She never realised how much until someone let her stop.

Part of her will always want to remain contained, to lock up everything about herself she thinks is too sharp for anyone else to handle, and let her own hurt spill out and drown everyone instead. It’s hard to proffer truth when she’s never much wanted it herself.

But she’s better with her here, and maybe it’s selfish but it’s selfish for the right reasons. Better reasons. There’s something - everything - to be said for that. Vanessa softens the world, she takes the sharp edges off; everyone’s less afraid of where to tread with her around.

She was happier scrubbing Sarah’s stupidity and stomach acid out of the carpet than she has been in weeks, just because Vanessa was there, warming the place, making the air a little lighter. It’s not hard for Charity to see now why it took attempting to shield Vanessa from her shortcomings to break them, why for all her empathy she could only see it as deception. Charity knows she got complacent, forgot that Vanessa has never been a stranger to her flaws.

Charity tips the tainted water down the sink, refills the bowl. They talked, they’re talking. She prays the warmth she’s been left with is more than false hope.

**_..._ **

****

Vanessa wipes the smudge of dust from Charity’s nose with her thumb and when she holds her remembers just how perfectly she fits against her shoulder. Charity breathes tentatively like the air is fragile but nothing breaks, she’s not going to let anything shatter any time soon.

There’s something to be said for prayers, she thinks. There’s something to be said for honesty and building things to last. She kisses Vanessa for the thousandth time and it feels like the first, feels like the last where there is none. Feels endless.


End file.
